The Department of Education has postponed its semiannual Accreditation Advisory Committee meeting for the second time this year, according to an email sent to committee members. Inside higher education.
A meeting of the state’s Institutional Quality and Integrity Advisory Committee originally scheduled for July has been postponed to October 21. Now, due to the government shutdown, the meeting has been rescheduled for December 16th.
“As many of you know, most Department staff, including those supporting NACIQI, have been furloughed and the Department has suspended operations, except for certain exceptions,” Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, wrote in an email. “The Department will soon publish a notice in the Federal Register announcing the change in meeting dates.”
Inside higher education We reached out to the department for direct comment on the delay but did not hear back before publication.
The meeting is expected to include Deputy Minister Nicholas Kent’s first comments on accreditation since taking office, as well as compliance reports from five different accreditation bodies. Three of the agencies are institutional: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the New England Commission on Higher Education, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Senior Colleges and Universities. The other two are programmatic: the Commission on Accreditation of Midwifery Education and the Commission on Accreditation of Physical Therapy.
While it is not officially on the committee’s agenda, the meeting could also be the unveiling of six new committee members appointed by Trump.
When department officials announced the first postponement in July, observers noted that the terms of six of the commission’s 18 members would have ended by the time the rescheduled meeting took place. With key decisions about the future of higher education accreditation looming, many policy experts see this as a sign that the Trump administration is trying to tilt the panel in its favor.
New appointees may now remain anonymous for two months and compliance reports will not be checked until the next meeting. While none of these agenda items are as high-stakes as accreditation reviews, the process by which independent accrediting agencies are given the authority to guard federal student aid, one expert worries it could lead to a backlog of future evaluations.
“although [the accreditation agencies] “In this compliance report, they put it before NACIQI that they may also be revisiting their regular accreditation,” said Antoinette Flores, director of accountability and quality in higher education at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “So that adds to the burden and may complicate the issue.”
Flores, who held the same position as Andrade during the Biden administration, is concerned that the delay will not only slow down future reviews but also impede current reviews, putting certain agencies and the institutions they serve at risk. She explained that when an agency undergoes a compliance review, it has 12 months to resolve issues and demonstrate that it meets the committee’s standards. So if it fails to demonstrate that it meets those standards within that time, the agency’s authorization could technically be in jeopardy.
Flores said she is particularly concerned about the Middle States Council and the New England Council because they both received letters from the Trump administration earlier this year urging them to take action against member institutions for alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws. Neither certification body did so and they were unable to submit compliance reports by the 12-month deadline.
“So is the agency compliant? Will its accreditation continue? … That’s a fundamental question,” Flores said.
Others care less.
Kyle Beltramini, a policy fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-leaning policy group, said that to his knowledge, NACIQI has never failed to meet a deadline and review an institution’s compliance or accreditation status.
So while it’s unclear what would happen if the meeting never took place or if agencies failed to submit compliance reports by the deadline, Beltramini believes any consequences of the delay would be minimal.
“I don’t think we’re going to see the nuclear option where the certification body loses its mandate,” he said. “Part of the reason is that even if that’s what the government wants to do – which I don’t think is the case – they just don’t have the full majority on the committee.” (Technically, though, the deputy minister and education minister don’t have to follow the committee’s guidance.)
Either way, Beltramini expects that if the meeting takes place, it will set the tone for how the Trump administration plans to move forward with certification.
“There is broad bipartisan consensus that changes need to be made to the system, and more and more often you see NACIQI trying to hold accreditors accountable by raising issues with them and putting them on the record to make them uncomfortable,” he said.
